1. Field of the Application
The present application relates to a method and an apparatus for switching a user interface, in particular, to a method and an apparatus for respectively switching the user interface and the items using a representational icon bar and an item icon bar.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to cater for the busy life of modem people, various portable electronic devices that occupy smaller space and are convenient to carry along are put forward one after another. For example, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) phones not only provide with all functions of a conventional communication device but also enable the user to edit files, receive/send emails, access networks, or use instant communication software through a built-in windows operating system. That is to say, such portable electronic devices may be used for not only making phone calls but also providing diversified functions just like mini personal computers. For modern people seeking for efficiency all the time, such devices have been one of the tools that are indispensable in the life.
However, for portable electronic devices requiring for “light, thin, short, and small,” the volume is considerably limited. If both a screen and a keypad are needed to be disposed on the device, the size of the screen must be reduced. Meanwhile, in order to equip a relatively large screen in a limited space, recently, a touch screen has been developed. The touch screen integrates the keypad as the input interface of the portable electronic device, thus saving the cost and area occupied by the conventional keypad.
As compared with the conventional keypad input manner, the operating manner of a touch screen is simple and intuitive. From the comparison with the conventional keypad, it can be easily found that when operating an electronic device with a keypad, the user must read the content displayed on the screen while pressing the keypad, so as to successfully finish operations such as word inputting or menu switching. However, if a touch screen is applied in the electronic device, the user can easily finish various operations by simply clicking with a stylus or directly pressing with his finger on the screen. Therefore, the touch screen is actually a more convenient input manner.
However, the touch screen of the portable electronic device is still limited in size, whereas the portable electronic device has fairly diversified functions. In order to display items of a number of functions on a limited screen for the user to choose, the cell phones currently available on the market mostly adopt a graphical user interface which uses thumbnail icons arranged in the touch screen to represent all the functions.
FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of a conventional graphical user interface. Referring to FIG. 1, in a graphical user interface 100, the touch screen is divided into multiple display blocks respectively displaying representational icons including a Home 110, a contact function 120, a message function 130, an email function 140, a camera function 150, a music function 160, a network function 170, a weather function 180, a setting function 190, or the like. Although the above manner enables the user to clearly see all the functions of the portable electronic device, once the user chooses to enter an operation interface corresponding to a representational icon, only one function can be performed, and if the user wants to switch to another function, he/she must return to the original graphical user interface 100 to choose another representational icons, which is quite inconvenient in use.